In Joy!

Pursued by the Word

Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, 1928.

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As a child, books were my safe place. My place to hope, to dream. My window seat into other worlds. My unscrambling place. My place to imagine life in fresh ways. My place to confront the impossible and see the possible. My place of pursuing life.

Books are still that for me…a place of invitation: get unstuck, untangle what’s tangled. See afresh. Laugh. Weep. Travel forth. These characters look oh-so-similar to me.

A good book (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, prose) is a mirror. Shows me what I didn’t even know was there. A good book disrupts my comfort zone, even while it’s a safe haven. A good book dismantles barricades. Barriers that distant me from desire, from hope, from dreams. A good book grabs me. Hugs me so tight that tears cascade, stinging down my sobbing face. Hugs me so profoundly that I laugh way down deep.

A good book invites me to be more fully alive.

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Enough sorrows to sink me

Enough joys to keep me buoyant

And the God-of-Angel-Armies ever at my side.

That’s the epitaph of this year for me.

Enough tears to hollow caverns of sorrow in me. Enough joys to lift me from those carved canyons of sorrow. Always, always, in it all, the God who is Present, Father, Son, Spirit, ever by my side.

I’ve run to books often in this up-and down-year. I’ve poured over prose. I’ve played alongside poetry. I’ve reread books from my childhood. I’ve discovered children’s literature I’d missed along the way. I’ve returned to familiar authors. I’ve read books as new as the dew. I’ve read books enjoyed over generations.

So here in Advent’s waiting, as a new year begins, as I wait and wait for that celebration, for that Baby to be born again in my heart, I read still. I read the familiar yet ever new Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It’s fresh and old. A prayer that savors the holy Word.